


The Natural Flow of Things

by Readabook13



Category: Changeling: The Lost, Mage: the Awakening, World of Darkness (Games), Worm - Wildbow
Genre: Amnesia, F/F, Magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-18 12:23:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11874330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Readabook13/pseuds/Readabook13
Summary: A young woman with brain damage is forcibly awakened as a Mage, and is now trying to figure out the nature of magic and how to be a half decent person, despite being a bit of a hedonist.





	1. Chapter 1: Tʜᴇ Pʀɪᴍᴀʟ Wɪʟᴅ

Warm, humid, and entirely too big in every way. That’s how she’d describe the forest she was  **sprinting**  through at the moment, sleeve ripped and bloodied by a very aggressive thing that seemed like it could have been a fox made of hunger that she stared at for just a second too long, long enough for it to feel real. She had been  **racing**  along the stream filled with fish that aren’t for as long as she can remember, which isn’t that long if she’s being completely honest with herself.

 

 

Maybe a few hours? Days? Certainly not weeks, she isn’t tired enough for that. If she’s being honest with herself, she isn’t tired at all. No matter how long she  **runs** , she isn’t tired, and the still bleeding wounds from the not fox don’t seem to slow her down, despite the bone being visible before it healed over, to the point where now it only seems to be about an inch deep. She feels like that isn’t normal, but that might be one of the things she forgot.

 

 

She doesn’t remember a lot of things when she thinks about it, things like her name, but thinking about it is kind of depressing, so she keeps walking, her soggy socks abandoned long for the unforgivable crime of being uncomfortable, squishy, and heavy when she’s dashing for what seems like it’s going to be a very long time, if not forever. Her feet feel much better now, brushing against the grass that occasionally draws blood, like everything else in the forest that you give a slightest chance.

 

 

At least the forest is pretty enough. Flowers the size of skyscrapers (would lure her in and slowly dissolve her if she stopped to smell), birds you’d think were dyed by the greatest of artists (wouldn’t even leave bones when they’re done), and deer without number (if she looks like a threat, she’ll be eviscerated. If she doesn’t, whatever’s behind her will do the same if she ever stops. She doesn’t look, but she can hear. Hunters without end. They can  **die** , but there will always be more.).

 

 

She can’t stop  **running**. Her heart won’t stop beating in her ears, harder and faster than it should. The sun is bright on her back, almost too bright, burning away at her skin, bleaching the red sweater white, only the red blood from before untouched. The sun is pretty too, though. It’s not like he’s trying to hurt her, she just doesn’t quite belong here, with her suboptimal body and lack of instincts. She’s still not tired. She feels more awake and energetic then she probably ever did back when she had memories. Maybe even a bit excited, given that there were some grapes ahead. Or at least they looked like grapes. Either way, she really, really, really wanted to eat them.

 

 

Her fingers were also cut up and stinging from the unnoticed nettle wrapped around the grapevine, soaking the grapes in the cherry ichor. She couldn’t stop to eat them, so they went into her mouth without hesitation, only delaying chewing enough not to bite through her already abused fingers. They’re already healing faster than they should, but that’s no reason not to avoid hurting them, even if the pain is numbed by how goddamn excited she is, and the fact that these grapes are entirely too good. She feels like she’s vibrating right now, and everything is so… so… pret-

 

She still seems to be  **running**  when she comes to, the moon hanging over her now. The forest has given way to the ocean, and she’s in a lot worse shape then she remembers. Her knees and feet are torn up to all hell now, her hands are covered in even more painfully stinging scratches filled with venom and blood, her hair is matted with blood, and her mouth feels like she ate some of the nettle, and maybe some of the worst poison ivy you’ve ever seen. She isn’t having trouble breathing, but she really wishes she could stop  **moving**.

 

 

Nevertheless, she reaches the point where the shore meets the ocean, always, always  **moving** , away from waves of teeth and fur into the waves of salt and tide. She can see some kind of tower on the other side of the ocean, and the endless wave of predators behind her aren’t going to run out of energy any time soon. So, as quickly as she began  **running** , whenever that was, she jumped into the sea and began to  **swim**  in waters colder than the arctic, chilled to the bone near instantly

 

 

The tides pulled her underwater within moments, filling her lungs and stomach with salty brine. The sounds of the predators seem to have stopped, but she cannot stop  **moving**  still, for if she stops  **clawing**  her way up to the surface she knows that she’ll never come up. Occasionally her head comes out of the water long enough for her to cough up some of the ocean that’s lodged itself in her stomach, only for her to pushed or pulled back down by some great wave or squid. She still can’t feel tired, even as she’s choking or feeling the skin getting pulled off by suckers or torn by tooth. She kind of wishes she could. It would be nice to just fall asleep, instead of having to keep  **moving** , never stopping. She guesses that she could stop, but then she would just  **die** , which kind of defeats the point of  **moving**  for so long. Like giving up on putting out a fire halfway through. She doesn’t even think she could sleep now, with her heart beating so hard she was worried about it bursting out of her chest, the adrenaline burning through her limbs.

 

 

It seems like the ocean around her is more blood than water at this point. Maybe it was slamming into into the seafloor with all it’s coral, maybe it was the eels and spirits of predation attracted to the scent of blood and desperation. She couldn’t stop  **moving** , not even now, her blood and bone exposed to the seawater. Her arms and legs were still somehow treading water, maybe pulling vitality from the primordial sea.

 

It was painful, but to stop was to  **die** , and she couldn’t do that, because living’s important, right? Maybe it was just the nature of this fucking land of animalistic impulses and anima, but she couldn’t just let herself  **die** , right? That would mean she wouldn’t be  **moving** , and she needed to  **move**  so she wouldn’t  **die**. She needed to be  **alive**  so she could  **move** , since  **moving**  stops her from dying. And she had too much energy to  **die**. So she had to keep  **moving**  to not  **die**  so she can keep  **moving**  so she won’t stop living so she can work out all this excitement so she can  **live**  so she can… get slammed into the rainy shore  **live**  a doomed whale carcass to get torn at by ravens and raptors. So she can climb up the thorny tower. So she won’t  **die**. So she can keep  **moving**.

 

 

“At least it isn’t hard to keep my grip”, she mutters as she wraps her hand around what feels like a thin cord with poisoned knives embedded, careful with her footwork lest she fall. At this point a few hands are missing fingertips or nails, and a few of her toes are just gone now. She almost wishes she had a harness to hold her weight, rather than just surprisingly sturdy handholds on an endless pillar of black basalt clawing the sky. Or trying to fuck it. She feels like she probably deserves the somewhat juvenile snicker about the vaguely phallic nature of towers, particularly towers with an odd shape on top, given that it’s currently ruining her hands to what would be beyond repair if they didn’t heal so fast. Each time she takes her hand off of the vines, she watches her hand for about a minute to make sure it’s healed fully, since mincemeat doesn’t hold onto things well, and falling wouldn’t be fun at all.

 

 

More than anything she wishes she had a way to repel the vultures. They aren’t necessarily actually vultures, they aren't even all birds, but they’re all circling around her, waiting for her to stop  **moving**. For her to  **die**. To scavenge what little flesh remains on her bones. They’re always too far away to punch or bite, at least without losing her grip. So she just glares at them, and keeps  **climbing** , and occasionally calling them mean names. It won’t stop them from occasionally swooping down and opening another row of cuts on her back that’ll heal over in a minute or so, but it will make her feel better, and that’s pretty important when she’s  **climbing**  forever. She kind of wonders what she did to deserve this, but any thought is interrupted by pain or tempestuous emotions.

 

 

At some point, she started bleeding from her nose. She doesn’t know why. She doesn’t even question it at this point. Of course it’s bleeding. It’s also her eyes and mouth. Why wouldn’t they bleed? That’s just nature at this point. Who cares, as long as she keeps  **moving**? It’s only ebola or whatever. Only a seizure that causes her to shake on the vines, kept on only by barbed thorns. Only bloody vomiting. Only missing teeth. Nothing that would stop her from  **moving**. Because she likes  **moving**. She won’t  **die**  if she  **moves**. Maybe she’ll eventually reach the top of the tower. Or the tip, if she feels like laughing won’t open up any cuts. She kind of makes a game of naming the birds. The eagle is Prometheus. The vulture is Gravedigger. The flying mass of teeth, feathers, and plant matter is Audrey. The Hummingbird is The Little Fucker. That might be humanizing them too much, but it’s not like she won’t heal from the scratched back or gouged eyes, and she can’t just stop thinking. Too much energy. Too much mania.

 

 

She’ll reach the tip eventually. She can’t laugh about it forever, but now she’s  **climbed**  too much to care about semantics. She feels like there’s something important up there. Why else would she  **move**  towards it this whole time? Maybe some clothes. Most of hers went missing at some point, probably in the ocean. Maybe some more grapes. At least when she was drunk she didn’t notice how much she got hurt, even if she got cut up more she wouldn’t feel it for a while. So she  **climbed**  more. So she wouldn’t  **die**. Maybe there’s some kind of way to wash herself up there. She still tastes brine and grapes and blood. She can  **climb**  as forever though. It’s like the myth of sisyphus, right? The pointlessness of the task is the point? You know, there’s no meaning in the world, so you may as well do something stupid that never ends because at least you’re doing something. She feels like she has a lot of dumb thoughts about philosophy. Maybe that’s why she’s here. Because she wasted all her time in life thinking about dumb stuff, and now she’s in a thoughtless… top. As in the top of the tower. Huh.

 

 

It’s disappointingly empty. There’s nothing but a cavern in the palm. If it wasn’t vaguely freudian before, it sure as hell was now. On the other hand, she can’t stop, because that would mean she isn’t  **moving** , and the vultures wouldn’t wait forever before they kill her, so now is no time to get uncomfortable about an odd combination of yonic/phallic imagery. Of course, the only way to get down is another vine. Covered in thorns. Because of course it is. In practice, it’s kind of like the world's worst ladder. You impale your hand. Hold tight. Grab lower down. Take your hand off. Wait for it to heal. Grab lower down. Repeat about eight thousand, six hundred, twenty seven times. Keep  **moving** , even if there’s nothing that would hurt you in the cave covered in cave paintings of every animal  **alive** , covered in blood, sweat, tears, and other bodily fluids long since faded.  Impale your hand. Hold tight. Grab lower down. Take your hand off. Wait for it to heal. Grab lower down. Keep  **moving**. Never stop  **moving**. Until you reach the bottom, and realize that there’s nowhere left to go but up. Then you start to cry, as she did. Leaning up against the wall, covered in blood, sweat, tears, and vomit. She looked around, and saw an infinite number of animals, carved and painted by whatever spirits  **live**  here. Who cares? She couldn’t  **move** , except in circles or lines, or other ways that never really burn through all this energy. She only sees animals, and names.

 

Names. Maybe she should write her name. Leave it for whoever gets here next. But what is her name. It isn’t an uncommon name, that much she knows. Really popular, and kind of pretty. It doesn’t start with A.  It doesn’t start with B.  It doesn’t start with C.  It doesn’t start with D. Maybe it starts with E. E feels right. A B C D E. Ella? No. Elizabeth? No, but Eliza is a nice name. Evelyn? Sure. Keep it for later. Emma? Maybe.

 

Either Evelyn or Emma. Evelyn. Emma. Emma. Evelyn. She’d flip a coin, if they existed here. Emma, Evelyn. It’s almost definitely one of those two. Maybe if she pulls off one of her nails and scratches a mark into it? It’s pretty hard to get it off of her thumb, and she’s worried about it offsetting the weight when she scratches a line into it. Line is Emma, bloodstain is Evelyn. It takes about a second for hit to hit the ground when she flips it, and she can barely see that it’s Line side up before insects eat away at it. Emma. Emma Emma Emma. Emma’s a nice name. Pretty. She’d probably want to fight an Emma right now. Too much energy. She should get to writing it down before she explodes or something. She wish she had a marker, but with how much she’s bleeding her hand should work. She finds a particularly pretty fox, and rubs her wrecked hand against it.

 

E

M

M

A

 

Her name looks pretty nice in all that red. That wasn’t so hard. She’s kind of feels more tired right now. Harder to walk. Harder to talk without slurring her speech. Actually, she’s really tired. Maybe… ready. Too…

 

 

**Fall Asleep** _**Awaken.** _


	2. Chapter 2: Waking up from the Awakening.

Sterile, scentless, white. She hated this room. It felt fake, and she couldn’t move for some reason. She felt too heavy and tired, and she couldn’t keep a train of thought for too long without a headache. Lets see. Too clean room, pointy thing… needle in her arm, brace around her leg, headache. The word was hospital, right? Wait, that’s pretty obvious when she thinks about it, her hands and feet were probably all torn up from before, right? They didn’t hurt anymore though. Mostly just felt tingly from what she assumes are painkillers. She’d move them, but all the energy from before seemed to be gone. She hated being tired like this. She needed to move, to have things happen. Why was she so tired? She felt like she could run forever before, and now she’s just… not moving. Bored. “Is any-anybody here-re?” She’s talking wrong. A bit too quiet, and she bit her tongue.

 

A minute goes by on the clock. Hospitals have buzzers, right? So if she moves her hand to wherever that is, she can get some kind of life in this fucking room, other than that tiny flowerpot in the corner. Just need to move her hands, right? They twitch as she tries to slowly bring them up, only to have them fall back down to the thin blanket the moment she tries too hard, muscles going slack while her vision blurs. She feels like throwing up, but that would require moving. She wishes she could move. Where did the energy go? She felt like she could run forever before. She kind of preferred that. There was life there, even if it hated her. Now there’s just a shitty little flower in the corner and a shitty little body that didn’t do what she wants. And maybe a doctor, if she can just…  **force**  herself to  **move**.

 

_A brief feeling of exhaustion as some of the last echoes of energy that set into the cuts and scrapes left on her soul are pulled out while the imprints of the knowledge from forbidden fruit and the carvings in the tower of those who died long ago seems to **shift** , sending thin, thorned vines of supernal truth through veins and muscles, reinforcing them with the image of life, reflected from the truest form of it. There’s a brief dash of mania as mana courses through ethereal phloem, feeding them with the waters of the prima materia._

 

A pained twitch of the hand, followed by raising it without it falling back down with the first bit of excitement and flapping it around a bit to see whatever that was. The hand doesn’t do what she wants, exactly, but it does move jerkily towards the orange nurse button and press it in, and once it does she begins to tap the rail with nails that seem a bit too long. Movement against something. It’s fucking great, even if it’s just a finger. She’d tap her foot, but the footboard was too far away. She tried anyways, foot moving around. It isn’t the endless energy from before. Not even close. She’s still got a throbbing headache and blurry vision, and her throat felt like she hasn’t talked for too long, lips cracked and dry. At some points, a nurse comes into the room.

 

“It’s good to see you awake, Ms. Barnes.”

 

Barnes. Is that her last name? It’s an okay last name, she supposes. Nothing special, but not necessarily bad. What’s the normal thing to say when you’re in a hospital and just woke up?

 

“Y-you too.”

 

The sentence doesn’t pass her lips before she decides to wait until she can see straight to talk again. The nurse seems to write something down before checking the machinery beside the bedside. The tapping on the rail continues even when the nurse very politely tells her not to move too much. After about a minute of analysis, a few questions come up, presented in the kind of kind, gentle voice that immediately makes you worry about whatever happened.

 

“What’s your name?”

 

“E-Emma Bar-Barnes.”

 

“Do you remember what happened before you fell asleep?”

 

“No. S-sorry.”

 

“How are you feeling now, Ms. Barnes?

 

“F-Fine, I g-guess. Wh...What ha-happened?”

 

“Your father found you at the bottom of the stairs after you fell down a week ago. You've been asleep since then.”

 

“Oh.”

 

While it went on for a while after that, only a few things were notable. Painkillers are terrible concoctions that make everything feel bad and wrong, at least if you were to ask her. She probably has some kind of brain damage, given the slurred speech and twitchy hands. The wilds were apparently a beautiful, terrible, fevered dream that felt more real than this pastel wasteland ever could. She can’t remember anything about her life besides the dream and now her name. Hospital food is made by the the worst kinds of people who think soda is something living beings should ever actually consume at any point. And she had a broken leg. Which is pretty shitty, if she’s to be honest. Makes it very hard to move. After about half an hour of talking to the nurse who she found nice, if albeit unsettling, a man she could only assume was her father from the same red hair and the tears running down his face came in.

 

He seemed nice enough, as uncomfortable as the ensuing hug was both in terms of being a bit too tight and her not really knowing him. She wasn’t exactly going to tell him that though, on account of it being rude, and that if they knew she couldn’t remember much they’d keep her here much longer than if she just had some speech issues and needed some physical therapy. As it is she’d still need to wait for a cast and some crutches. No, staying here isn’t allowed. Not at all. She needed to get moving soon, get better food. Really do anything that isn’t sitting still when she can’t stop feeling the need to do things like run around or take a walk or move somewhere nice, like a park or forest. No, she needs to get out of here, as fast as possible so she can figure out what to do next somewhere that doesn’t make her head feel like it's filled with static.

 


	3. Chapter 3: Barely Scratching the Surface

A large house, all alone, stuck in bed a week after she got off of the hospitals. She had nothing to do but think about how bored she was and stream movies, since she couldn’t get into the phone or laptop in this room. At least she knew that she was the kind of asshole who has a TV in her room, which is information about herself. From what she can tell, she’s an upper middle to lower upper class teenage girl who occasionally either works as a model or pays people to take pictures of her pretty regularly, likely with some narcissistic tendencies given that the pictures were all over her walls. Which is understandable, given that she is pretty hot when you ignore the cast and crutches if you were to ask her. Her father is a lawyer is an accountant, her mother is a saleswoman, and while she does have an older sister, she’s in college in another state, making learning much about her unlikely to pay off any time soon. She could probably figure out more, if she could figure out how to open the thick leather clasp and lock on her diary. At least she assumes that it’s a diary. Maybe it’s her notes on modeling tricks. It’s probably a diary though.  
  
  
There was also the other thing she had to deal with. The energy. The feeling of the venom and thorns left in her hands, the taste of sickly sweet grapes in her mouth, the need to move and never stop. It should just be a dream, right? But it didn’t feel like it. It honestly seemed more real than anything in this room, like everything else is just lower resolution, if that makes sense. And it wasn’t just her feeling weird, right? She remembered that burst of  **mania**  in the hospital, the feeling of  **forcing**  her body to move, the feeling of  **strength**  coursing through her veins. It had to be something. She just needed to figure out how to replicate it so she can… do something. Maybe figuring out what she wants to do. She could probably get some lunch if she could walk without worrying about a ... What was the word again? Oh right, Cataplexy. A Cataplexy attack. Lunch seemed like a good first goal for using whatever she has. The kitchen was just downstairs, close but kind of dangerous if she could collapse at any time. So, how did she do it again? It seemed like she just wanted to be able to lift her arms, right? So she just had to… try. She stared at her hands for about twenty minutes, focusing as hard as she could. She didn’t feel any stronger though. It couldn’t be pointless though. It wasn’t allowed to be. What is she doing wrong?  
  
  
Her stomach makes an ugly growling noise as she lays on her bed. She probably isn’t going to starve if she doesn’t get some good, or anything dramatic like that. She could probably even go down without using the weird power that she definately has. But she didn’t want to. Using her power felt good, like she was doing something dangerous and exciting and beautiful again, like in the dream that wasn’t a dream that couldn’t be a dream because it wasn’t. So she had to use it, not because she needed it, but because she wanted to feel whole again, to get past the numbness and the broken bones and the insomnia and all the bullshit society surrounds you with and  **LIVE**.  
  
  
 _The world seems to fall away around her in a way, like she took a step to the left in her own head. Her imagination seemed sharper, the impressions of the Idea of the Wild bouncing around in her head. Everything is alive, the dull room vibrant for the split second she’s focused on changing the world for the better. Or her her own enjoyment, which is still a net benefit. She can figure out what to do like this, when she’s alive and in control. She tries to focus, despite a feeling in her arm she’d prefer to ignore until she’s done. Let's see: Last time she used the power, what did she do? She wanted really hard. That didn’t seem to be enough this time, though. She needed to think it through now, even if she wanted nothing more to go off of instinct at the moment with all the energy flowing. There must be a way to get results. What did she even really want to do? If she’s being honest, her main goal right now just moving without worrying about falling down, followed by devouring whatever’s in the fridge until she didn’t feel the aching numbness, and maybe going for a walk, meeting someone, having some- She would shake her head if she wasn’t in this weird state where she couldn’t feel anything but the pulsing of the energy in her wounds and the aching of countless scratches opening on her hands. She needed to focus.  
  
  
The echos of the supernal bounced around her head while she was in her fugue. She knew what she had to do, on some level at least. First step is to visualize the change she wants. She wanted to get out of bed and get some food, so the best way to do that was probably either fixing the brain damage or reinforcing the body so that a fall wouldn’t hurt as much. The first sounded better, but she couldn’t imagine it properly. She knew pretty much nothing about how brains worked, and the knowledge etched into her soul didn’t fill in the blanks. The first though, the first she could do. There was a bit of a feeling of more of the energy from the imaginary scratches getting pulled out and stretched throughout herself as an option presented itself to her: Reinforce her nervous system, skin and organs, or muscles. The issue was that she was worried about tripping or collapsing and hitting her head on the way down, so that last one probably wouldn’t help. The first would mean she would be less utterly clumsy for a while, but the second would help if she had a cataplexy attack. Would that really matter though? She can just be calm on the stairs. And being more dextrous would help with getting food. So that’s probably better.   
  
  
Once she had that set up, she could repeat the trick she did in the hospital bed. The mana formed thin, thorned vines, this time moving through nerves and her brain. It wasn’t a bad feeling, exactly. Part exhilarating, part calming, with a bit of itching. The process took a few seconds to complete, as long as it felt for her. The moment it was over, she snapped back to reality, vines disappearing to all looking with only their eyes._  
  
  
She startled at what just happened, staring at her hands. They’re covered in bleeding cuts again, like she grabbed a rosebush by the thorns and tried to pull it out of the ground. They aren’t twitching or lagging behind though, which seems like a good tradeoff. She snapped her fingers a few times to double check, and the noise was probably the most satisfying thing she had heard in her life. She’d probably cry if she wasn’t worried about that making her muscles stop working, so instead she grabbed her crutches, walked into the bathroom and starting covering her hands in bandaids, since they seemed to be short on actual wrappings.  
  
  
Maybe she could heal the scratches with her power? It seemed to be related to biology, so it might be worth a try if she can do it without hurting herself. She felt like she could, if she was less desperate whenever she used it. As it is, though, she was probably better off putting on the bandaids and getting a glass of water (or wine) and some of that chicken soup. It’s not like there’s much of a rush to figure out, given that she didn’t really plan on doing anything with it outside of making her life a bit better.  
  
  
As she walked down the stairs to get some food, she considered the fact that her plans mostly involved using her power to do things like help herself get to sleep or heal faster. It’s not that she didn’t want to help people, that wasn’t it at all. It’s just… she didn’t want to get hurt again. Even if she wasn’t still walking around with crutches and using her power to be able to walk around without tripping over anything and everything or cutting herself when she tries to cut an apple, she’d still want to avoid putting herself in danger, because then she wouldn’t be able to do things again, which is pretty much her least favourite state of being to be in.  
  
  
It probably sounded selfish, but it wasn’t. Panacea was already a thing, so she probably wasn’t needed as a healer. Her power didn’t improve her enough to do much much other than mundane tasks, so fighting crime wasn’t an option. Honestly, as far as she can tell, her most impressive ability is probably _(a flicker of mystery as she tries to remember what she's capable of)_  controlling a dog or two. So really, it’d probably be best for her to avoid heroics altogether and non be a liability to the real heroes. Why, it’s downright polite of her to remain an uninvolved third party and get drunk and get dates with hot people instead of sticking her nose into other people’s business.  
  
  
Transparent self justification aside, she was rather curious about the nature of her cool power. Did it mean that she was a cape now? She couldn’t really see herself going around using it to fight people, but she supposed that she probably wasn’t the only one who didn’t feel the urge. Lots of powers were probably too weak to fight crime with. Were they all so complicated but simple but complicated? Maybe she should do some research. A bookstore should have something, right? Maybe when when she was allowed to the leave the house, she’d go to a bookstore or something. That might be nice.


End file.
